New Delhi: In a bid to regularise and control the power consumption in the country, a committee under the Chairmanship of Sam Pitroda is planning to bring ‘low cost smart meters’ on the doorsteps of every Indian.

Though increasing power generation in the country has been an uphill task for the government, this initiative will help curb power theft completely. Besides checking the power consumption, these meters will also monitor the utilization of water and cooking gas in every house.

According to Power Ministry’s sources, very recently the Pitroda Committee, which was constituted last year to prepare the road map for installing the smart grid in India, considered the idea to apply similar kind of meters across the country.

The Committee also wants the smart meter prices to be very reasonable and affordable for every customer. Hence, the project has been named ‘low cost smart meters’. Very few countries of the world have started using these kinds of smart meters to check consumption of power recently.

According to sources, this meter will monitor the power consumption online, which will prevent the power theft completely as it cannot be tampered. Currently all states have their own meters, which can be easily meddled with. However, the smart meters will also keep a tab on the power consumption of other equipments in the house including fridges and ovens.

With these meters, it will become easy for the customers to know the details of their bill and will also help the power distribution companies to keep limited staff.

According to official sources, at the beginning these smart meters will be used only for electricity consumption. But, later on they will be applied for water and cooking gas too.

Power Ministry sources called the drive important as the use of electrical appliances is growing rapidly in India.